Economy / Finance

China’s Strategic Standpoint

By George Friedman* – Geopolitical Futures  One of the hardest problems of foreign policy is developing an accurate evaluation of a potential adversary’s intentions and capabilities, which are frequently separate realities. I discussed this recently in a…

Globalization

Magellan, Inquisition and Globalisation

By Felice Noelle Rodriguez and Jomo Kwame Sundaram(*) KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Mar 16 2021 (IPS) – Globalisation’s beginnings are symbolised by Ferdinand Magellan’s near circumnavigation of the world half a millennium ago. But its history is not simply of connection and trade…

Civil rights

Myanmar death toll tops 120 as Chinese factories are torched

By  staff writers Nikkei Asia, Japan Martial law expanded to wider region of Yangon BANGKOK — Myanmar’s military has extended martial law to broader sections of Yangon after the deaths of dozens of protesters in the city’s garment production hub, where several Chinese…

Climate Change

The Politics of the Anthropocene in a World after Neoliberalism

By Duncan Kelly* – Boston Review Can today’s crises inspire action at the scales required to think about planetary sustainability?  Historian Adam Tooze has argued that COVID-19 is the first economic crisis of the Anthropocene, a term encapsulating the idea that human…

Climate Change

Merkelism without Merkel: Green hopes high before German state vote

By Philip Oltermann* – The Guardian Pragmatic state premier with flat-top ahead in polls as CDU faces defeat in country’s south-west Winfried Kretschmann, a white-haired former biology teacher who has been the state premier of Baden-Württemberg since 2011, can look forward to…

authoritarianism

Hungary challenges rule of law mechanism at ECJ

By   !!444 InsightHungary!!!  (*)  Hungary and Poland on Thursday launched a challenge with the European Court of Justice over a so-called rule of law mechanism in the European Union’s budget that would link payment of EU funds to upholding of…

Fake News

Rush, Roger, Rupert, and The Donald May Ride Forever

By Robert Lipsyte* – TomDispatch As Do Pestilence, Famine, War, and Death The Four Horsemen of our media apocalypse — Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump — have ridden roughshod over us this past half-century leaving their hoofprints on our politics, our…

Misinformation

Harry and Meghan: heavy is the head that wears the crown

Editorial – The Guardian The Sussexes show monarchy cannot be relatable while its politics are hidden but its members are conspicuously part of a grouse-shooting, landowning caste Of royalty, Walter Bagehot wrote in The English Constitution, “we must not let in daylight upon the…